Wake (41 page)

‘If the newest grave is here, out in the open,
they
can see it.' He meant that the people monitoring the satellites could register another death.

‘They don't care.'

‘There must have been other balloons,' Jacob said. But he didn't believe it. It would have been easy to put the same message with every balloon—so why didn't they?

‘Come on. It's time to tell everyone,' Theresa said. ‘We'll need help with the body, and the kakapo feed.'

Part Eight

S
am never had much to say for herself, and Bub was often comfortably quiet, so Oscar didn't mind too much that they had been at work for over an hour without a word beyond the most practical exchanges.

Sam was holding a block of wood over the top of a metal stake, while Bub hammered it gradually into the path of the shoreline track, twenty metres above the cove where the bottles collected. Bub was using a sledgehammer, but holding it close to its head and scarcely doing more than letting it drop onto the piece of two-by-four.

Oscar didn't have a job of his own. On the day they'd buried Dan he had helped Bub make the rope ladder. He was now sitting on its coiled length, waiting. He was thinking about his grandmother, and something she'd once told him. ‘As a girl I was in and out of hospital with tuberculosis of the bone,' she'd said, and had lifted her trouser leg to show Oscar the rumpled scar on her shin. ‘I couldn't gad about like my classmates. But I learned to be a most patient person, and it has stood me in stead.'

Oscar wondered whether, when he got out of Kahukura, in whatever kind of life he'd contrive afterwards, he'd be ‘a most patient person'.

He could feel the hammer blows through the soles of his feet. But there was another sound—a labouring engine—that filled the silence between each blow.

‘Bub!' he said. ‘Stop for a second.'

Bub paused. They listened to an engine shift gears and recommence roaring.

Bub pushed past Oscar and hurried to the bend from which the town was visible. Sam and Oscar joined him.

There was a dust cloud above the clearing in front of the closely woven galvanised steel of the predator-proof fence. The digger they'd used to make the mass graves was at work, charging forward a short distance then backing off again, cab tilting as the whole machine rose on the heels of its tread. The sound of the engine ricocheted around the hills.

‘Who is that?' Oscar said. ‘I can't tell from here. And what are they doing?'

Bub dropped the sledgehammer and set off running.

‘It will be there,' Sam said softly. Her face was dreamy.

Oscar followed Bub, but Sam hesitated. She wanted to go where she knew her wind would be—the thing they were all calling a monster. But she didn't want them to see her with it. They'd been angry at her the other day when Bub and Jacob had brought Dan's body back, wrapped in rubbish sacks. When they set Dan down under the jacaranda, the wind had come. People were crying, and it came as if it craved salt. Sam, standing among the stunned and weeping survivors, had let the wind turn her. It was like the wave pool at the aquatic centre—safe for anyone who could swim. It was airy and liquid and solid, all at once. It cupped her like a hand around a lit match on a windy night. And then Warren shouted at her.

There was a fall of stones behind Sam. Myr slithered down the bluff and fetched up against Bub's metal stakes, where he stayed, rocking like a feather caught in the tines of fork. His force field deactivated. His feet touched the ground, and he came towards her.

Sam backed off.

Myr stooped to retrieve Bub's sledgehammer and began to do what Bub had been doing—hammering the metal stakes into the ground at the right angle of bank and path. Had he been watching them work? Was he now lending a hand?

Sam returned her attention to the digger. It was motionless. She made out a figure in front of it, against the predator-proof fence, doing something to the gate of the reserve. She couldn't see clearly enough through the settling dust to determine who it was. The figure paused to check its work, then hurried back to the machine and climbed into the driver's seat.

Behind Sam the pounding continued. Myr was at work on the second stake, the one Bub had already hammered to the correct depth. He was driving it right into the ground. He'd done the same with the first—only a few centimetres of metal now protruded.

Sam asked Myr what he was doing—he was leaving nothing for them to tie the ladder to. He ignored her and kept up his assault. Sparks flew. The stake was visibly sinking. Sam saw a crack appear in the ground, growing with each blow.

Myr dropped the hammer and put his foot on one stake. He pressed it back, then leaned his weight on it. The crack widened. It snaked between one stake and the other. Myr wiggled the stake with his foot—it moved with a ripping noise. Myr lifted his foot then pulled both stakes out of the now wide crack. He used one to probe its edges, wriggled it back and forth at the corners of the gap he'd made. The gap looked like a mouth in a loose jaw, dropping open.

Sam again asked Myr what he was doing, and he continued to ignore her. He dropped the stakes, braced his hands and hips against the bank, and pressed hard on the path. The patch of ground by the crack sank, then tore loose, and came away. A whole shelf of earth tumbled down the bluff, in streamers of grass roots and a confetti of clods. The path had gone. The bluff continued to crumble quietly. Myr picked up the stakes and threw them down into the cove, then pitched the rope ladder after them.

Myr was on the far side of the gap from Sam—not that she had any desire to go near him. She wanted to know why he'd just done that. Why he wanted to make it impossible for them to collect their messages. But she knew his answer would be enormous, and something she couldn't hope to understand. So she didn't ask. She simply turned from him and ran back towards Kahukura.

Belle had spent her morning in the reserve, on the far side of the ridge, in a grove of old-growth totara and rimu. She was checking for signs of seeds on the trees, doing what she would normally do, had none of this happened. Doing her job.

Once they'd buried Dan, Bub had gone back to the clearing for the canister. He carried it to the spa and wordlessly presented it to Belle. When she saw what the canister contained she was so relieved she almost wept. Until then she hadn't understood just how anxious her solitary watch had become.

The survivors were all upset about Dan. They'd guessed that Dan had killed himself because the balloon came without an answer—without a show of interest. But Belle had been answered. She'd asked for help, and packets of food had been packed up, and the balloon had found its way in on a gentle breeze. The world had wished her charges good health.

Belle calculated that the feed would do her kakapo for another ten weeks. She'd gone to the grove to see how much fruit was forming. If there was a good crop the kakapo wouldn't just survive, but would flourish and breed. They at least would go on uninterrupted. Belle peered into the treetops and dreamed about a future—not her own.

Being in love had somehow made Belle's life lighter to her. If she had to die, then dying was just another thing she and Bub could do together. It would be easier together. And if the trees were full of fruit, then perhaps one of next spring's little star-eyed chicks would be named Belle, and another Bub.

The grove was peaceful. Belle's happiness felt permanent.

The hill was high and its stone crest tended to reflect sound back towards the bay but, after a time, she became aware of a noise, a roaring.

For the sound to carry so far it must be loud—a heavy engine, its gears chopping and changing. The roar was accompanied by clanks, and a twanging, like breaking wires. It was the sound of a machine savaging something metal.

Belle started back up the trail to the ridge.

She got there first. She ran into the dust that hung, as if hesitant, before the bush. The door of the utility shed was open, and Belle's initial thought was that she was glad she'd made sure to close the storage bins, and wouldn't have to wipe dust off the bagged feed. Then she registered an oddity. The mesh of the predator-proof fence was too fine for much dust to blow through, and the gates were made of the same stuff—so how was it that the billows of dust were coming towards her at ground level? She could hear an engine howling in the heart of the dust, and a ringing sound, a chain flexing, link adjusting to link—then a thrum, and metallic wrenching.

A gust of wind hit Belle's back, and the dust blew away before her. She saw the fence, a broad, twisted ribbon of mesh pulled from its uprights, some of which were still firmly rooted, while some were skewed. Several had been dragged right out of the ground, concrete footing and all.

The predator-proof fence ran for half a metre below the ground—so had come out leaving a trench, like a knife mark in a wet cake. As the length of mesh came free, the chain slackened abruptly. The digger the chain was fastened to jumped backwards, tilted, then dropped with a thump. The digger had backed into Belle's quad bike and nudged it over. The bike tipped, then began to roll. Belle followed it with her eyes and only then saw Theresa—her shaggy red hair and pale, resolute face. Theresa was running towards the digger. She saw the rolling quad bike coming towards her, and dived out of its way. But the bike hit a big tussock. It bounced up and veered right into Theresa's dive. Woman and machine collided. The bike altered direction again, very slightly, but Theresa spun and tumbled, landing face down on the grass.

The digger continued to reverse, and its chain tightened again, singing. Another three metres of fence pulled free of the ground. Dust poured up the slope and forced Belle to drop her face and close her eyes. She was shouting, and her mouth filled with grit. It grated between her teeth. She opened her eyes again, shaded them with her arm, and squinted into the haze.

Warren was standing up in the cab of the digger, looking back at Theresa. He stayed there a moment, poised, balancing in the plunging machine, then jumped out and made off.

Belle's eyes were streaming. She didn't see where Warren went. She only watched the digger. It was locked in reverse, pulling steadily away. The fence resisted and the chain hauled the front of the digger down. It would rise up onto the toes of its tread, then its bucket would brace against the ground, and it would lose traction, slide forward, and fall down four-square again. Belle watched this bucking motion for a minute, then, at a point when the tread was squarely on the ground, she rushed at the machine, jumped over the grinding, juddering tread, and caught hold of the frame of the cabin. She climbed in and tried to make sense of the controls. She looked for a clutch, a brake, before noticing the swinging keys.

She grabbed the keys. And, at that moment, the chain parted. The digger rebounded backwards. The chain recoiled and lashed, ringing, against the bucket. Belle grabbed the levers, curled up over them, and jammed her legs under the dashboard. The digger flipped right over and rolled, the chain winding around the bucket and cabin, its loose end lashing the ground. Belle was showered with chips of stone. Hanks of grass came in and thumped her, like fists in boxing gloves. She hung on grimly at the centre of the big, articulated metal missile. Then the engine stalled. The digger stopped rolling and came to rest on its roof, rocking violently. Belle's knees slammed into her jaw, her teeth closed on her tongue, and blood filled her mouth. She gasped and actually felt her teeth slide free of her own flesh. Blood bubbled out of her mouth and ran into her nostrils and her eyes. It ran in a hot wash over her forehead and into her hair. She hung on to the knobs at the end of the levers, suspended above the dented roof of the cabin, her knees over her head, partway through the kind of backflip she hadn't performed since she was seven and playing on the bars at primary school. The digger gave a final hiss and the bucket dropped—the hydraulics had lost pressure. One of Belle's shoulders gave an agonising pop and she let go and fell onto the dented metal of the cab's roof.

There was a scuffling noise. William slid in beside the digger, looked at Belle, then thrust his hands through the window, clasped her under her arms and hauled her out. He dragged her away from the teetering machine. He used his cuff to clear the blood from her face. Then he grimaced and subsided till his forehead was touching the turf.

Belle tried to say ‘Theresa' and the part of her tongue she'd bitten through flapped against her lower lip. Blood poured out over her chin. She drew her wounded tongue back into her mouth and closed it, kept still, breathed through her nostrils where blood was already drying and stiffening. She couldn't lift her right arm, so pointed with her left.

William looked, exclaimed, got up, and went to Theresa.

Jacob gave Sam some tweezers, angled the treatment room's magnifier, and set her to picking grit from the graze on Theresa's face.

Theresa was unconscious. Her right hip was coming out in black bruising and there was a long bloody slot in her right buttock where her heavy belt had been pulled into her flesh. The bike had caught on the empty belt clip where, in the early days, she used to fasten her gun. The bike had struck her and pulled her with it for a moment. Her pelvis wasn't broken—as far as Jacob could tell—but he wouldn't really know what state she was in till she woke up and could tell him where it hurt, and what could and couldn't move.

Belle was sitting with Bub. He was holding a packet of frozen peas to her face. Jacob came over and asked Belle whether the Tramadol he'd given her had taken effect. She nodded. He had her open her mouth, and inspected her tongue. He warned her not to talk—she was going to have twenty-four hours on boiled water, and then be taking any nourishment though a straw. Jacob got Belle to brace against him, then he popped her shoulder back into joint. He gave Bub the sheet and some scissors and told him to make a sling.

Bub asked, ‘How's William?'

‘He can't run places,' Jacob said. ‘I've told him.'

‘I'll stay with him from now on,' Sam said.

‘Well, actually, I need you to help find Warren. It's a division of labour thing.'

Belle made muffled, throat-only protests, and Jacob patted her leg. ‘I can guess what you're trying to say,' he began, and had to look away from Belle because her eyes filled with tears. ‘I'm going to give you a couple of sleeping pills and a good drink of water and send you to bed. You have to give your tongue a chance to heal. Bub—'